The story of pencil’s inventor (Joe Dixon and His Writing Stick)
The story of pencil’s inventor (Joe Dixon and His Writing Stick)
It took the civil war and 50 years of struggle by a determined
man to show the American people that the pencil was here to stay.
In the early
part of the 19th century, few Americans wrote with pencils. The only
pencils available came from Europe and were not of good quality. They cost 25
cents each – at a time when that amount of money would buy a basketful of food.
The first
American who saw the need for a good, inexpensive pencil was a
13-year-old boy in Marblehead. Massachusetts – Joe Dixon. His search for a way
to fill this need occupied a great deal of his time and his thinking in the
years that followed. Before he succeeded, he became an inventor
of considerable importance.
Joe Dixon’s
interest in pencils began with graphite – the soft, black substance used in
making the “lead” for pencils. U.S. sailing ships trading in the Far East
needed ballast on their return trips. Graphite, mined in Ceylon, made good
ballast because it was heavy, easy to handle and cheap. Joe’s father was a ship-owner,
and when his vessels returned to Marblehead they poured the graphite into the
water of the bay.
Although Joe
had never seen a pencil, his friend Francis Peabody told him how the lead was
made – with graphite and clay. Mr. Peabody also described the
shape of the two narrow strips of wood which, when stuck together, held the
lead in place.
With the aid
of another friend, Ebenezer Martin, Joe shaped two pieces of rounded cedar
wood, each with a groove down the middle of the flat inside
surface. Then he mixed graphite dust with clay and added water. Rolling a strip
of this mixture into the form of a pencil lead, he baked it in an oven.
His First
Pencil
When the
lead was hard, he put it in the groove of one of the cedar sticks, applied glue
to the inside surface of both sticks and pressed them together. After the glue
had dried, Joe sharpened one end of his writing stick and tried it. It wrote !
Not perfectly, of course, but perhaps it was no worse than some of the pencils
in use at that time.
Since Joe
had no money to continue experimenting, he took a job at a kiln
where he could earn a living and also learn about baking various materials.
Later he moved on to other jobs, working in a Boston print shop for a while and
then at the Hall Dye Works in Lynn, Massachusetts. At the dye
works Joe built a machine to print designs on cloth.
Dixon was 23
when he married Hannah Martin, the daughter of his old friend Ebenezer. Their
small cottage served both as a home and a workshop.
There he
designed and built three machines for making pencils. One pressed the
graphite-and-clay mixture through a tube that was the thickness
of a pencil lead. Another cut narrow sear sticks into the proper lengths. The
third put a groove in half a dozen sticks at one time. Hopefully he began to
manufacture pencils.
The business
was not an immediate success, but he learned to make better and better pencils
as he gained experience. He continued with his experiments, buying raw
materials in large quantities and soon found himself dangerously short
of money. Then he had a change of fortune.
A Happy
Accident
One day he
bought a stove for his wife. It was one of the first iron stoves
ever made in New England. In a week or two it became rusty, and
Hannah was not able to keep it black and shiny.
With his
mind on pencils, Joe paid little attention to the stove. But one day powdered
graphite fell on the floor by accident. When he tried to clean it up, he
slipped on the greasy stuff and fell on his face. His wife
laughed and remarked that one side of his face was black and shiny.
“Stove Polish!”
he quickly exclaimed.
He and
Hannah polished the stove with graphite. It shone beautifully. Hannah’s friends
all wanted the polish, and the young couple worked nights to package
the new product. The demand grew so great that they had to hire people to help.
Soon Dixon’s
Stove polish appeared in store all along the East coast. The money from its
sales gave new life to his pencil business, and he opened a small factory at
Salem, Massachusetts. By 1830 he could after pencils for ten cents each, but
still there was little demand for them.
Other
Discoveries
Although his
pencil business made no progress, his tireless efforts led to discoveries which
proved valuable in later years. Though experimentation he and Isaac Babbitt
produced a metal which would not wear away under continuous friction.
By combining
the knowledge gained from the jobs he had held, he developed a new printing
process. The use of this process later built a great industry, but at first
only counterfeiters realized its value.
When Dixon
learned that counterfeiters were using his process to make banknotes, he dealt
with the situation in an unusual way. One day he walked into a bank in New York
City, placed a $100 bill on the president’s desk and asked him to exchange it
for ten $10 bills. “First you should make sure that it’s not a counterfeit
bill,” Dixon warned the banker.
The
president examined it carefully and passed it to the cashier, saying, “ It’s as
good as gold,” Then Dixon took off his hat – and dozens of $100 bills dropped
out. “Take as many of these as you want,” he said to the banker. “I can make
more at home,”
Then, taking
another homemade bill from his pocket, he explained and idea he had for
printing banknotes which counterfeiters would find difficult to copy. This was
a method of printing with colored inks. “It’s a secret process in invented,” he
said.
The
president at the bank offered him a large sum of money for the invention.
Instead, Dixon gave it without charge to all banks that issued paper money at
that time.
Dixon’s
expenses were now mounting, and losses from his pencil business were greater
than the profits from stove polish. He decided to find a growing young industry
and improve its products or its manufacturing processes. On a trip he learned
that brass mills needed something better than the pots
they had of melting metals. These pots often fell apart when heated to high
temperatures.
In his
workshop he mixed more graphite and clay, worked the mixture into the shape of
a pot and baked it in a kiln. Then he filled the pot with big pieces of zine
and copper and heated them to the melting point. The 1980-degree
heat reduced the metals to brass – but his pot did not break. He increased the
heat to 2780 degrees, and the pot still remained unbroken.
When the
United States was fighting a small war in Dixon’s graphite crucible
was used in iron and steel mills. Orders for pots became more and more
numerous.
To increase
production, he built a factory in Jersey City, New Jersey. The crucible
department was located at one end of the plant, and the stove polish and pencil
departments at the other end.
After Dixon
had been in the new plant for a year, he studied the results of his efforts. He
found he had made $60,000on crucible but he had lost $5000 on pencils.
In 1849,
Eberhard maker, established a company in New York. At about the same time the
Eagle Pencil Company was formed. But Business was slow for the two new
companies and for Dixon. The lead pencil had not yet become popular.
It finally
won popularity during the Civil War, when the need for a dry, clean writing
instrument became widespread. Soldiers wanted to write letters home, but they
couldn’t easily carry pens and ink. Pencils were the answer!
Shortly
afterwards, Joe Dixon invented a machine which shaped enough wood for 132
pencils per minute. Still it was almost impossible to fill the demand. By 1872
Dixon pencils were flowing from his factory at the rate of 86,000 each day. The
five-cent writing stick was at last a reality. Joe Dixon died in 1869 at the
age of 70. The company he started is today one of the largest manufactures of
lead pencils in the world. The firm still bears his name, though none of the
Dixon family owns any part of the business.
About a
billion and a half lead pencils are sold each year in the United States. The
writing stick which Dixon struggled to produce is the most widely used of all
our small gadgets today.
Vocabulary
Inexpensive,
low in price; not costly
Inventor, a
person who invents things. To invent is to think of and develop something
new - a process, a design, a machine.
Graphite,
substance used in making “lead” for pencils
Ballast,
heavy material placed in a ship to keep it steady when it has no goods to carry
Clay, a
soft, sticky kind of earth which becomes hard when baked
Cedar, a
kind of tree
Groove, a
long, narrow, hollow cut in the surface.
Glue, a
substance used for sticking things together
Kiln, a
large oven or closed fireplace used for baking, burning or drying
Dye works, a
place where colors are applied to cloth
Cottage, a very
small house
Tube, a
long, hollow pipe
Raw
materials, materials still in their natural or original state, before processing
or manufacture
Stove,
something sued for cooking and heating.
Rusty,
discolored by rust. Rust is a reddish coating which forms on iron, especially
in wet weather.
Greasy, oily
or slippery
Polish, a
substance used to make a surface smooth and bright
Package, put
in containers
Friction,
the rubbing of one thing against another
Counterfeiters,
persons who make counterfeit (false) money
Banknotes,
paper money
Cashier, a
person who receives and pays out money in a bank or business office
Brass, a
yellow metal
Pots, large
vessels or containers with covers on them
Zinc and
copper, metals used in making brass
Crucible, a
pot for melting metals at high temperature.
Instrument,
an object used for performing a task
Gadget, any
small, useful object
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